Standardized mobile wireless communication protocols may establish peer-to-peer communications between two physical layer entities at the bottom layer of the protocol stack. In a mobile wireless system, this interaction can occur across an air interface between a physical layer entity on the network side, such as a base station, and terminal equipment such as a mobile communication device in a coverage area serviced by the remote radio head.
A base station or other physical layer entity on the network side may be partitioned into distinct modules that perform different functions on the physical layer data. For example, base station functions may be partitioned into a base transceiver system that includes a radio equipment controller (“REC”) and remote radio head (“RRH”). The RRH and the REC can perform complementary functions and exchange digitized physical layer data over one or more communication links. The REC can perform demodulation and baseband processing. The RRH can perform radio frequency processing on the data.
Physical layer data may be communicated between different modules of a base transceiver system. The physical layer data may lack any identifying characteristics or parameters that can be used to discriminate among digital data belonging to the different frequency channels and antennas. Examples of such identifying characteristics or parameters include the RF channels associated with different sets of physical layer data, sample width, oversampling rate, frame markers, slot markers, and the like.
Systems and method are desirable for independently characterizing digital physical layer data communicated between distributed physical layer entities in a telecommunication system.